Art Collecting for Us: Meet BA Thomas
The first of a new series introducing you to emerging and established artists.
The art you choose to hang on your walls is an intensely personal endeavor. Because of that, it’s also one of the first things people notice in a room. If you want to significantly boost your interior design, spend some time seeking out artists and their work. My new series will help you do just that. Think of it as walking through unique galleries all over the world without travel expenses. I hope you enjoy the ride.
In Places of Passage, even a hallway merits notice. Its maze of patterns and quirky details, such as a keyboard hung on the wall, exudes playfulness. Places of Passage, 2025. 16 1/4 x 12 1/2 inches; $1,775.
Let’s banish the idea that good art and art collecting is the exclusive purview of the very rich. You can find art that has both aesthetic and investment value within your price range. But it takes time. That’s why I am launching a regular post (once a month, with luck) to shine a light on an artist I think is great enough to invest in, and maybe under the radar enough to be affordable.
Here we go!
A background of sprightly lace and a woven pattern frames the scene of a dressmaker’s studio. Atelier, 2025. 44 x 54 inches; $9,200.
BA Thomas
An artist who hails from North Carolina, BA Thomas paints interior and exterior spaces so personal that they powerfully reflect the human element they were created for. She is in her early thirties and already has many shows and exhibitions under her belt. We saw her paintings in Paris last summer, at Brigitte Mulholland’s gallery in Paris.
Thomas paints scenes that make us the voyeurs, expected to observe the details that make it so fascinating. Maison Aline, 2025. 36 x 36 inches; $6,800.
“People love the whimsy and lightness in BA's work,” Mulholland says. “They are intimate and filled with a lot of details that create a really lovely atmosphere. I can't tell you how many times people have walked in and just instantly fallen in love with the work.”
It’s pretty much what happened to us. My daughter, in particular, spotted the paintings first and they appealed to her on a very deep level. We wandered around the gallery for at least an hour, taking them in. Thomas plays with spatial perspective and incorporates layers of color and texture in ways that strike you differently every time you look away and then back again. A writer in Artsuite describes Thomas’ technique like this:
“In her paintings, space breaks apart and behaves irrationally; objects tilt at strange angles as if seen from different viewpoints. The overall compositional perspective is slightly voyeuristic, akin to peering down into a dollhouse or theater set. The representation of space in Thomas’ work is at once confounding and familiar, both impossible and somehow believable.”
Another reason we like this artist is because her work celebrates interior spaces. She is not a realist by any stretch, but her immense attention to detail reveals a love for everyday objects—things perhaps we don’t always acknowledge but would certainly miss if they weren’t there.
It’s as if the monied client and the attentive shop clerk have exited the room just momentarily. Haute Couture, 2025. 54 x 40 inches; $8,800.
Thomas says she spends a lot of time observing interiors from all kinds of media, from Airbnb listings to magazines to her own drawings as she enounters places that speak to her. Often her paintings capture the essence of multiple places, which may explain the layered effect they have.
Reflections, repetition, point of view—all are captured dreamily in Thomas’s Building What Is Home, 2025. 12 x 9 1/4 inches; $1,385.
Thomas mentioned one of her most important sources for design is Ilse Crawford, a UK design firm dedicated to making “responsive homes that support and embrace people’s physical, emotional, and psychological wants and needs. For anyone who thinks about this essential relationship between place and person, Thomas’s painted scenes act as illustration. Sort of like your dreams made manifest.